Glenn Reynolds’ Tipping Point

From Cluetrain to Hugh Hewitt’s book, Blog – the metaphor for the sea change that is happening in communications is Gutenberg’s Movable Type Press and the Reformation. Glenn’s new post at TCS begins with a quote of his from a 2002 article:

As UPI columnist Jim Bennett notes, what is going on with journalism today is akin to what happened to the Church during the Reformation. Thanks to a technological revolution (movable type then, the Internet and talk radio now), power once concentrated in the hands of a few has been redistributed into the hands of the many.

The MSM is experiencing significant market share loss as more and more of us turn to the internet for our news and our entertainment. See my earlier post here. Blogs have had a huge impact on the credibility of the Mainstream Media with Dan Rather’s career ending "not with a bang but a whimper" as only one example. Glenn continues:

I know that I pay less and less attention to newspapers and television, and more and more to news from the Internet. I also know that I place less value in the "vetting" function of established media where controversial stories are involved, because it seems to me that they’re not terribly trustworthy in this regard. (Not only is their reporting not to be taken for granted, but sometimes they’re manipulating the very events they purport to describe).

The term "tipping point" may be accurate — we may have crossed a threshold in which the game changes. Perhaps it’s a case of the media world becoming sufficiently saturated that new expansion is coming at the expense of established players, as people have only so much time and attention to offer.